Xelloss found himself roused by the chirping of birds and a ray of sunlight falling stubbornly into his eyes. After the initial internal cussing, something cliked in his mind. Sunlight should not have hit him from his bed in the campsite, he was always careful about that. The second thing to click in his mind was that his Lina-chan was still sleeping peacfully in his arms...That was nice...that usually didn't happen...That shocked him completely awake.
His abrupt upright movement woke Lina, and she darted awake as well. "Xell -- " then she noticed their location.
"I'm sorry Lina-chan! I must have fallen asleep." he winced. Baka Xel! You were supposed to return her to the camp before the chimera's watch!
"Xelloss!" his beautiful Lina-chan was blushing, and it had an angry twinge to it. "They are going to know about us when they wake up and find us both gone...If they haven't already!"
He couldn't help himself, her anger was delicious, and her mouth so inviting. His lips darted in to silence her and his fingers ran themselves through her cascading tresses. When he finally decided to let her up for air, he quirked an eyebrow at her and opened one of his gemstone eyes. "I truely didn't mean for this to happen Lina-chan..." He leaned towards her, his mouth pressed to her ear, "But such a mistake was worth it, to wake with you still in my arms..." She can't possibly be mad at me after that spcheel.
Lina sighed and nuzzled his neck tenderly. "I can't possibly be mad at you after that load of crap." she whispered.
Close enough. He grinned.
"Ah, but i meant it." He said, and really did. The warmth and comfort of the small body nestled beside him when he woke left him feeling wonderful, light, almost heady...he felt invincible.
She smiled at him with that cute little mouth, and it set his mind on other things that particular part of her anatomy could do to make him tingle like that.
She caught the look in his eyes, eyes he opened just for her, and wished they had time. Their time was always so short together...to short. "Xel...we have to get back." she said, attempting to rise and get dressed, a deep note of regret in her voice. There was nothing better she'd rather do than stay the day with him on this creek bank, but it was best to get the confrontation with the others done as soon as possible.
The mazoku priest stood with fuild, cat-like grace and drew her into his arms before she could protest. His teeth took tiny nibs along her jawline, and his fingers traced delicate patterns along her spine. "Shh now, my Lina-chan...what's done is done, ne? Might as well be together a little longer.." His voice was deep with lust, and a few other emotions the sorceress couldn't quite place...they sounded dark though, and she didn't like it, the urge to comfort him and rid him of those dark emotions overcame her better judgement.
The way he held her so tightly to his body, and the sweet nothings he was whispering in her ear, broke down the last of her resolve, and once more they fell together into the mossy loam of the bank.
The sun was at it's zenith when she once more lay sleeping in his embrace. He closed his eyes against the light, and burried his face in her hair. The utter bliss of their union had washed away his earlier euphora, and now only those baser emotions remained, reminding him that things would not always be so bright.
"How can I do it Lina-chan?" there was an odd lump in his throat. "Soon Zelas-sama will order me to end your brillant spark of life...to make you into a creature of the dark. Heartless like all the others, like I was until you gave me yours..."
A single silent tear slipped from his closed lids to catch momentarily on his lashes, before wetting her hair with it's moisture. "Ashiteru, Lina-chan." He whispered, knowing he'd do what needed to be done, when the time came...and that he would live all eternity regretting the decision. "Ashiteru." he belatedly repiled to her sleepy comment from the previous night. The single spot of water in her hair would be the only sign of his sorrow when she awoke. He was, after all, a mazoku, but for now, while she slept in his arms, feeling falsely safe and secure, he could leave that aside, and be simply her lover, if only for a time.
Zelgadis paced the entire circumfrance of the clearing they had called 'home' last night for the tenth time that morning. "Where are they Amelia?! You were on watch! You should have been more alert! There's no telling what that Mazoku bastard is doing to her right now!" he raged.
Oh Lina...if he's touched you...
"Zelgad -- Zelgadis-san...Gomen -- I...I didn't see either of them leave!..bu-but Lina-san can take care of herself! We'd have heard something if he had -- " Amelia started to protest.
"Not if he teleported her somewhere!" the worried chimera cut her off before she could finish. "You can't have missed the way he's been staring at her lately! Like -- like some sort of possesion!" A worried Zelgadis without his morning cup of Joe threw his back against a tree and sank down to the ground, burring his face in his hands. "L-sama, what if he's hurt her?" his voice was quite again now. Such show of emotion was unlike him, he knew, but this was Lina. Lina who had salvaged his soul from fitting the monstrous outside his Grandfather had cursed him with. Lina who gave him a chance, and called him 'friend' even after he had treated her life and everything else as secondary to his cure. Lina who he hadn't had a chance to tell his feelings to yet...
Amelia's hand on his shoulder startled him out of his reverie. "Zelgadis-san..." her voice was low with her own sadness, barely hidden. "I have noticed the way he's been looking at her...and I'm not blinded by feelings for her so much as to ignore her returning those looks." Her head was turned down and to the side preventing him from seeing her face, but he thought he saw sunlight sparkle off of tear drops welling in her eyes, before the impact of what she had said hit him. "Lina couldn't possibly -- "
Couldn't possibly what Zel? Have feelings for a mazoku? At least he looks human...
Entwined with his petite lover on a stream bank, half a mile from the camp, Xelloss dreamed, a dream so vivid it spoke of portends.
A horrible moonsoon of Power and Energy raged around them, Lina's tingy figure huddled pathetically into his arms. In the dream he knew she was hurt, badly, struggling to survive, and he frantically fed her his own life energy in vain hopes of giving her enough to heal herself. He caught brief glimpses of creatures to horrible, or beautiful, to name in the shape of the swirling oddly silent, tempest, and tried to sheild the precsious burden in his embrace from the sights.
Above them stood a woman in feirce golden glory, looming over them in stark metallic relief to the chaos of the storm. Her white, almost greecian robes were the only things not desturbed by the horrible belam all around them. The three figures seemed perched in the eye of the very End itself. Her voice fell on their ears like honey laced knives, her stotic face in sharp contrast to the words she spoke directly into his mind.
"In the beginning I created the three races, and into each I put a different heart. Demon, Dragon, and Human, kept separate, different in their similarities."
"Into the Dragon's I placed hearts of diamond. Pure and strong, reflecting the light poured into it, the diamond is still capable of flaws, and shadows still lie in its depths, yet still it shines with even the smallest of light sources."
"To Humans I gave Alexandrite. The changing jewel, its colors shifting randomly, all and none at once, every emotion equal, beautiful in it's abundance, and individuality."
"Demons received a stone less forgiving than the others. Hearts of Onyx beat within their breasts. They absorbed all light, giving back nothing in return, yet with a richness of color lacking in the gems of the other two races, and what is black but the accumulation of all colors melding into darkness?"
"Over the years, and dragons proved themselves capible of acts on par with my dark ones. Hatred and envy driving them to wipe out an entire race of their own kind, while Mazoku showed undying loyalty to their lords and creators, learned lust and passion, friendship and comraderie, all akin to the love I gave the Dragons. Yet never did the Dragons learn true evil, and never did a Mazoku cross the lines of pleasure and loyalty to create pure love, and I was pleased with the doings of my children."
"Laws I set at the beginning of Time to keep the races separate from teaching each other the things which their hearts lacked, accomplished what they were intended to. I have sat and watched, from my Golden Sea, as time and time again one or another would approach the line of emotion between the two, only to step back at the last moment or be otherwise deterred from his transgression. My Demon Dragon King, my Gaav was the last to do so, with his compassion learned from his human form. He was not strong enough to cross the boundry and he paid the price for it."
"Now Xellos, you would try your hand? Of my oldest race of children, you are my favorite, Beast Master's servant, and of my youngest race, she is my chosen, but the Laws cannot be broken by just anyone, I would not lose either of you. Renounce your earlier statement of devotion to her, and all shall be as it was. Give up your illusions of love for my fire-haired child, or lose your heart completely."
The dreaming Xelloss poised on an abyss of indecision, Lina craddled in his arms as he slept, as his dream self held her to him here. He watched as the etheral, battered image of himself raised his eyes to meet those of the Golden Lord directly in an act of utter bravery, or stupidity...perhaps just pleading desperation, and gave her his answer. There was no indecisivness in HIS face or tone, just cold absolute certainty.